


time crawls on

by asofthaven



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Gen, they've graduated though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 07:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2573162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asofthaven/pseuds/asofthaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wants to know if Bucky remembers Hogwarts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time crawls on

**Author's Note:**

> This has been floating around my computer for a few weeks now, so I cleaned it up and am leaving it here for your all's enjoyment. The style's a little different from my usual stuff, but I think it worked out. Comments and critiques are welcome, as always!

St. Mungo's is depressing because no matter how cheerily the Assistant Healers smiled or how many potted plants lined bedside tables, there's this oppressive feeling of being caged that has Steve on edge every time he hears a door shut.

(They told him he'd get over the fear, but Nat and Sam were the only ones who understood that there's no _getting over_ a place that reminds you of hell and pain.)

(It's more about _getting on_ with.)

He doesn't have to be shown the way to Bucky's ward anymore, so the attendant at the desk waves him through the double doors with a smile that's a little too plastic to be genuine after checking in his wand. Everyone seems to be giving him sad smiles, and now that Steve knows what they feel like, he hopes he never has to show that expression to anyone.

(He thought the looks people gave him after he came back from the past to a future that was just as, if not more so, alien than the one he left were bad.)

(They're nothing to the knowledge that some things don't change just because you’ve had a dozen opportunities to alter the past.)

(No matter how many times he went back—and he did so often, breaking orders to only go when and where he was required because although the mix between a potion and a scientific serum had bestowed him with significantly better abilities, time-travel was still an uncertainty even in the magical world—every future had the same Bucky.)

(Or rather, every Bucky was the wrong Bucky.)

(The first time he came back from the past, Nat had told him about the ghost-like entity that followed his every voyage. He’d thought it was nothing but an exaggerated tale—the kind that often occurs in wartime, when nerves run high and everything feels surreal.)

(But then he'd actually seen the entity, in the middle of a trip back in time, and the moment they had started to duel he knew it was Buck.)

Bucky's room has a yellow and black cloth hanger stuck to the door, the Hufflepuff badger stitched into it and a haphazard 'James' written just underneath it. Steve smiles faintly; the only one who might have Hufflepuff regalia on hand was Sam.

He hopes they get along well; it was impossible to not get along with Sam, and they'd been at school together, so surely—

(He crushes the thought before it could take full hold, so it passed harmless through his brain— _so surely Bucky would remember that warmth, if not the person._ )

(He doesn't stifle the thought quickly enough to stop himself from wondering, for the hundredth time, at what point Bucky remembered Steve without knowing why.)

Steve knocks before entering, taking the Healer's chipper, "Come in!" and the fact that he can see Bucky sitting at his desk as a sign that it’s okay to enter. The door is wood, but the rest of the room is decidedly _glass_ and the curtains are drawn back.

Bucky relaxes minutely when Steve walks in—he's even more tense about doors opening and closing than Steve is, so Steve lets the door sit open slightly, after sending the Healer a questioning look and receiving a nod in return.

"Hey, Bucky," he says cheerily. 

(Steve remembers the first time he called him that, and sometimes still worries that he'll get that response again— _who the hell is Bucky?_ ripped out of a throat with no depth, eyes flat even in confusion.)

"Hey," Bucky replies. His voice comes out in a rasp, as if he's still unused to using his voice for anything other than hexes and curses with Slavic bases. He doesn't say anything else until the Healer has disappeared into the—yet again—glass office just off to the side of Bucky's room. He has a room to his own, but constant supervision given the nature of his magical malady.

(Steve knows that this particular Healer was chosen because of her small and unassuming nature, and also the fact that she was the fastest spell-caster the hospital had with the ability to take down a person twice her size sans wand. The other three Healers assigned to Bucky had similar qualifications.)

"Your friend Sam is nice," he says, and that's when Steve notices the smattering of Hufflepuff adornments now scattered around Bucky's room. He picks up a miniature, moving badger figurine with some amusement. "Is it normal for someone who's graduated to have so much of this stuff lying around?"

The mention, however distantly, of his house breaks any of the tension Steve felt coming into the room; Hogwarts is warmth, and Steve's latches onto it despite the fact that all of his previous visits have taught him that Bucky doesn’t really remember Hogwarts.

(But it’s not like Steve is even really sure that _he_ remembers Hogwarts, not when constant trips to the past have made him doubt the validity of his memories.)

"Sam teaches there now," he says as he takes a seat on Bucky's bed, "I don't think he can resist showing house pride, you know?" He laughs, but Bucky doesn't seem to find it funny. He hurries on, "You were in the same house, so I’m sure he just wanted to, uh…"

_Jolt your memory_ seems like the wrong thing to say. So does _share that with you_ , so Steve lets his sentence fall into awkward silence.

Bucky’s gaze moves from Steve to the yellow pennant hanging above the window his desk sits under. It's enchanted glass: never smudges, lets in sunlight to the patient's preference, is super-strong and nigh unbreakable, except to those with superstrength as a result of magic and science mixing in the most desperate way.

(The windows are also enchanted so as to make the patients forget that the hospital is located underground. Behind the glass is nothing but cement.)

(Bucky's not the only one who's spent time in a St. Mungo's long-term ward, and Steve hates the sight of those windows more than most things.)

Steve gets the feeling that Bucky knows what he wanted to say, even though Bucky's expression is unreadable. It's been two months since he was allowed visitors and Steve hasn't seen many expressions cross his face except for the occasional confusion and the far more common annoyance.

“You think he did it to help me remember?”

Steve isn’t going to pretend to know what Sam is thinking, so he shrugs before saying, “Maybe. Is it working?”

"Maybe a little," Bucky says finally, "It's not... I know what a Hufflepuff is, but I don't remember being a Hufflepuff," he continues, and here's the annoyance. Hearing it makes Steve feel a little better. Any kind of emotion out of Bucky makes Steve feel better.

"You will," Steve assures him. It's the only way he knows how to break the silence that falls every time Bucky can't remember something before hell.

This time, though, Bucky looks at him when he says it, his gaze hard. "Why do you believe that?" he asks, as if the question carries no more weight than a request to pass a quill, "You've been told everything I have."

(Steve thought the oppressive feeling of being caged couldn't get any worse, but he was so, so wrong.)

"They couldn't have gotten rid of everything," Steve says after a moment, his hand skittering towards his forehead with a thoughtless rub. 

(He's been told that yes, _yes they could have, with that mix of obliviate and the imperius curse, not to mention the potions they kept him on_ —and that's about the point that Steve stopped listening, because they may know magic, but they don't know Buck.)

(He has a hundred thousand memories in his back pocket, ones that he thinks will bring Bucky back: their first year at Hogwarts, when Steve was still sickly and lost every fight he started and Bucky was at his side, exasperated, every time; the first time Nat and Bucky met, after he found Nat teaching Steve hexes to use the next time he started a fight, her bright hair clipped back with an innocent green and silver bow; Hufflepuff-Slytherin joint Care of Magical Creature classes, where Steve saw a skeletal Thestral for the first time and Buck learned that Steve was there when his mom died.)

(There are a hundred thousand memories, but Steve's never sure which memory is the right one to bring up.)

"Maybe not," Bucky concedes, a tiny line appearing between his eyebrows, "There are some things... feelings, I guess, that come back, if someone mentions the right things."

"What sort of things?" Steve asks.

He shrugs. "I don't know until they say it."

Steve hesitates before saying, "You were Head Boy."

He doesn't know why, out of all the hundred thousand memories he has, this is the first one to slip out of his mouth.

Maybe he just wants Bucky to remember that he's _good_.

"I don't remember that," Bucky says, and Steve can feel that it's no longer a topic open to discussion. He tries not to let his hurt show as he moves conversation away from Hogwarts and house cups and being best friends with the Head Boy.

Soon the enchanted window tells him that it's nearing nightfall, and Steve eyes the fading sunlight with dislike. He prefers early mornings, where the brightly shining sun gives him the illusion that there's no cover for shady dealings.

(He knows better, of course, but it's become a compulsion ever since he came back to this future, the present; being out at night makes it easier to forget that everything is different.)

(But that only makes the mornings worse.)

"I'll head out now," Steve says, giving Bucky a wan smile. Bucky doesn't return the look, but he gets up to lead Steve to the door, as if he's showing out a friend.

(Steve thinks they are, but friendship only counts if it's a two-way connection.)

(Theirs is still there; it just needs to be dusted off and reinforced with something even memory charms can't undo.)

"Thanks for coming," Bucky says after a moment, and there's sincerity in his voice. Steve grins on his way out, tweaking the yellow and black banner on the door so it hangs straight.

"Of course," he says, "I'll see you later—"

His words fizzle out at the way Bucky stares intently at the banner on the door, his brows furrowed in thought.

"Buck?" Steve asks tentatively.

"You were a Slytherin, weren't you?"

He says it without moving his eyes from the banner, but Steve suddenly feels as if he's been pinned under a spotlight. A smile spreads automatically on his face despite the way his chest feels tight.

(Hope hurts.)

Steve's voice comes out even when he speaks.

"Yeah. Did Sam--"

"No," Bucky says. Steve can feel his chest expand with a curios mix of hope and trepidation, but before he can say anything, Bucky continues, "Just a feeling."

Bucky turns his head away abruptly, giving Steve the barest of a farewell before he closes the door with a firm click. Steve stares at the banner blankly before turning and heading back, his gut still churning with the certainty that Bucky was still there.

He was buried under hurt and hell and pain, but Steve would know his best friend anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
